By Gregory O’Brien
The School Journal was 100 years old in May 2007. A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal – a full-colour, lavishly illustrated book by award-winning writer Gregory O’Brien – celebrates, in words and images, the publication that over the last hundred years has shaped the country we live in.
“A nest of singing birds” is how the School Journal office was once described to poet and Journal editor Alistair Campbell. Over the course of its history, the School Journal has attracted work from some of New Zealand’s greatest writers and artists, among them Margaret Mahy, James K. Baxter, Janet Frame, Rita Angus, Russell Clark, and Dick Frizzell.
Poet, painter, essayist, editor, curator, and art writer Gregory O’Brien has a prolific literary output. His book, Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for Young People (AUP, 2004) offers a vivid introduction to contemporary New Zealand art. It won both the non-fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2005 and the Elsie Locke Award at the LIANZA Children’s Book Awards 2005. It was followed in 2008 by Back and Beyond: New Zealand Painting for the Young and Curious (AUP).
Gregory O’Brien was also a curator of the exhibition A Nest of Singing Birds at the National Library Gallery which accompanied the launch of the book.
A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal won the Reference and Anthology category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2008.
Both hardback (RRP $59.95) and paperback (RRP $39.95) editions of the book are now available at all good booksellers.
For more information or to order, email 100@learningmedia.co.nz or phone Customer Services on 0800 800 565.
